Last Thursday night (Aug. 26, 2010) I received an Outlook invite from my manager, the time stamp on the invite was 9:04pm AZ time (11:04pm Omaha, NE time, where my immediate manager is located). The invite was to a closed door meeting with him and our Director (our director is located here in Phoenix), my manager would be on the phone. Closed door meetings like this usually mean one thing, somebody is being laid off, and it's usually the lowest ranking person in the meeting, which would be me! The meeting was to take place @ 10am the next day; Friday, Aug. 27, 2010.

To give a little background:I am a corporate trainer for a large telecommunications company, have been for over 2.5 years. I have worked for the company for over 7 years. The group I support (train) is a growth channel; dealing almost exclusively with real sales calls, as opposed to service calls that might have sales opportunities.

Needless to say I was up all night, I am still human! My wife, equivelent of the Rock of Gibraltar in terms of faith, slept soundly through the night.

I was full of anxiety, trying to pray, thinking way too much, but getting some prayers through to God. Transitioning from my bed to my easy chair in the living room, but not sleeping at all.

Finally, while sitting on my bed, sometime in the 5am hour, God gave me the answer. (I didn't know it was the answer, I thought it was just another one of "my" good ideas.) There are currently 2 job requisitions open in the center I support, both sales jobs. I did not, do not, want to go back into sales - I feel like I've given enough years to being on the "front line", but that didn't matter, I must not lose my income; I must provide for my family. So I will ask the Team Lead what my chances are if I applied for one of those positions.

OK, so I get to work about 6:30am. Waiting for the Team Lead to arrive - time goes very slowly on this kind of a day. I hope nobody reading this ever has to experience this kind of "time slow down" ! She (the Team Lead) shows up @ about 7am. I go into her office and explain that I have this meeting @ 10am, and I ask what my chances are of getting one of those jobs?

She agrees that the meeting is likely of the type that nobody wants to be the subject of, and she offers that if it is, then she would be happy to "choose" me for one of the open positions. But it gets better (*read on please).

10am comes, about 14 hours after I get to work (that's what it felt like anyway). I go into the meeting and, sure enough, I am handed a "management separation packet". It was fairly generous actually, I would receive 7 months pay (the equivelent of 1 month for every year worked, pretty standard stuff), COBRA insurance coverage, etc... BUT I WOULD NOT HAVE A JOB! My last day as an employee would be Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010 - the very next day!

I interupt the "conversation" and ask, "What if I were able to obtain a different position in the company?". The anwser is, "absolutely, we can work with that" - and they offered to extend my current employment to Tuesday, Aug. 31, but I must be in my new position no later than Aug. 31, 2010or else I would be laid off.

*Here's where it gets real good!

I visit with the Team Lead once again and confirm the meeting was as we thought. She now got a bit more in detail with what she wants to offer me: she wants to "hire" me for one of the sales positions, HOWEVER she doesn't want me to take sales calls , she wants to then immediately move me into an "acting supervisor" position, overseeing one of the sales teams.

She called HR and explained what she wants to do, then called me back into her office a bit later. Of course I had to submit my application, and about an hour later actually interviewed for the position (we really did go through the entire interview, just over an hour). Since the requisition was so new I was actually the only applicant. She closed the requisition and told HR she had made her "selection" from the "pool" of candidates. I will receive the official offer from HR tomorrow (Monday).

The interesting thing is that I might actually receive in increase in salary, and I will receive compensation pay as the supervisor of a sales team. So God not only saved my income, He increased it! (Side note: my wifes salary was very recently reduced, as the school she worked for closed and the school she was hired by is brand new and has very low enrollment!)

God is good, He knew exactly what to have me do, and He knew exactly what would happen if I followed His prompting.

It was a most humbling experience and I give God all the glory. This is proof absolutely that God can use whoever He wants to bless His children.

But this also reminds me of a story I heard a preacher talk about once. A man comes into his office and asks for prayer concerning his job. He wanted to make more money and possibly a promotion. And be able to give more in tithes. So the pastor prayed with him and he left out with confidence that God was going to do something. The very next day he gets fired.

He calls the pastor all mad and says he wishes he never had prayed for him because things got worse and hung the phone up. Later that day he was offered a job that paid him in one week what he made in a month at the one he lost.

He came to the church and walked into the pastor's office puzzled about what happened. He told the pastor. And the Pastor told him that evidently there was not enough money in the one company that would pay him What God wanted to bless him with. So he got fired so that the other opportunity could present itself.

So his income and his tithed increased. But here's the funny part. Several month's later the same guy comes back to the pastor's office and complains that his tithe is to much and he could not afford it. So the pastor offers to pray for a decreased income so that he could afford it. In which the guy declined realizing how stupid his complaint was. Walk out without saying another word.

******

God is teaching me the same thing. I recently had to go on disability because a pain in my back is so bad at times. I don't know whether to pass out or puke (that's bad). The only time I have ever had pain anywhere near that was when I passed a kidney stone once. Doctors don't know what's causing it, but said a MRI would be needed to see.

But doing this I have had to live off an income that I really have to watch what I spend. And every month I have fallen short and had to rely on God. This is because my brother already pays some of the bills, so I cannot ask him. And my sister has a gambling problem and is in denial about it. So asking her is pointless because she never has money.

So here it is since last Thursday, I have about 5 bucks left to my name. And this has to last for a whole week. I thought I was just going to have to really tighten up. Today my sister calls and needs me to fix her pc which no longer works. I tell her she will have to pay for my gas because I have no money. I was expecting to only get 10 bucks. I was given 30 bucks. Now I know I will make it to the 3rd of the month. Every time something has happened to take money to make me not make it, something comes up to fill the need. Sometimes in more than one blessing. Things that were not happening before the need arised.

Last Thursday night (Aug. 26, 2010) I received an Outlook invite from my manager, the time stamp on the invite was 9:04pm AZ time (11:04pm Omaha, NE time, where my immediate manager is located). The invite was to a closed door meeting with him and our Director (our director is located here in Phoenix), my manager would be on the phone. Closed door meetings like this usually mean one thing, somebody is being laid off, and it's usually the lowest ranking person in the meeting, which would be me! The meeting was to take place @ 10am the next day; Friday, Aug. 27, 2010.

To give a little background:I am a corporate trainer for a large telecommunications company, have been for over 2.5 years. I have worked for the company for over 7 years. The group I support (train) is a growth channel; dealing almost exclusively with real sales calls, as opposed to service calls that might have sales opportunities.

Needless to say I was up all night, I am still human! My wife, equivelent of the Rock of Gibraltar in terms of faith, slept soundly through the night.

I was full of anxiety, trying to pray, thinking way too much, but getting some prayers through to God. Transitioning from my bed to my easy chair in the living room, but not sleeping at all.

Finally, while sitting on my bed, sometime in the 5am hour, God gave me the answer. (I didn't know it was the answer, I thought it was just another one of "my" good ideas.) There are currently 2 job requisitions open in the center I support, both sales jobs. I did not, do not, want to go back into sales - I feel like I've given enough years to being on the "front line", but that didn't matter, I must not lose my income; I must provide for my family. So I will ask the Team Lead what my chances are if I applied for one of those positions.

OK, so I get to work about 6:30am. Waiting for the Team Lead to arrive - time goes very slowly on this kind of a day. I hope nobody reading this ever has to experience this kind of "time slow down" ! She (the Team Lead) shows up @ about 7am. I go into her office and explain that I have this meeting @ 10am, and I ask what my chances are of getting one of those jobs?

She agrees that the meeting is likely of the type that nobody wants to be the subject of, and she offers that if it is, then she would be happy to "choose" me for one of the open positions. But it gets better (*read on please).

10am comes, about 14 hours after I get to work (that's what it felt like anyway). I go into the meeting and, sure enough, I am handed a "management separation packet". It was fairly generous actually, I would receive 7 months pay (the equivelent of 1 month for every year worked, pretty standard stuff), COBRA insurance coverage, etc... BUT I WOULD NOT HAVE A JOB! My last day as an employee would be Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010 - the very next day!

I interupt the "conversation" and ask, "What if I were able to obtain a different position in the company?". The anwser is, "absolutely, we can work with that" - and they offered to extend my current employment to Tuesday, Aug. 31, but I must be in my new position no later than Aug. 31, 2010or else I would be laid off.

*Here's where it gets real good!

I visit with the Team Lead once again and confirm the meeting was as we thought. She now got a bit more in detail with what she wants to offer me: she wants to "hire" me for one of the sales positions, HOWEVER she doesn't want me to take sales calls , she wants to then immediately move me into an "acting supervisor" position, overseeing one of the sales teams.

She called HR and explained what she wants to do, then called me back into her office a bit later. Of course I had to submit my application, and about an hour later actually interviewed for the position (we really did go through the entire interview, just over an hour). Since the requisition was so new I was actually the only applicant. She closed the requisition and told HR she had made her "selection" from the "pool" of candidates. I will receive the official offer from HR tomorrow (Monday).

The interesting thing is that I might actually receive in increase in salary, and I will receive compensation pay as the supervisor of a sales team. So God not only saved my income, He increased it! (Side note: my wifes salary was very recently reduced, as the school she worked for closed and the school she was hired by is brand new and has very low enrollment!)

God is good, He knew exactly what to have me do, and He knew exactly what would happen if I followed His prompting.

It was a most humbling experience and I give God all the glory. This is proof absolutely that God can use whoever He wants to bless His children.

It is indeed wonderful how the Lord provides for our physical needs, according to His promises! I've actually sorta learned I can trust Him in these things! (But we all get nervous from time to time, don't we? But He doesn't really worry much about that, I'm sure.)